Once We Were Here
by ElvenSailorGirl
Summary: A six segment look at the events and entanglements in the 1992 Michael Mann film version of The Last of the Mohicans. May include references to Fenimore Cooper's original novel. Contains pairings of Cora/Nathaniel, Alice/Uncas, and one-sided Heyward/Cora.


**Disclaimer:** I don't own Last of the Mohicans. Not the novel (except in terms of owning a copy) and not the film. So, no money is being made off of this.

**Introductory Authors Note:** This really was spawned from me watching the film late at night, just to watch it since I'm working on a critical research essay on the film and novel depictions of Cora. After watching it I couldn't go to sleep and the idea for this came to me. Some of the sections are meant to be an exercise in testing a less structured style of writing, so there may be some phrases that are technically wrong grammatically, but that's part of the point. The preface is meant to be this way, and there will probably be moments like this in all six.

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**Once We Were Here**

**Preface: The Frontier Place**

An inexorable wind blows west, west, west to the wood and the plain and the sea, and beyond into the unknown - that place where men cannot tread and that they fear. In the prairies an old man dies weary of the world and looking for that place where the machines of man and society cannot follow, that place where people must live by the sweat on their brow and the toil of their own two hands. He cannot find it - it is lost forever to that strong west wind that will blow until there is no more west, no more toil, no more man, no more life. He sinks into the ground slowly- becoming the ground on which pavement settles and men walk and children play.

There is no more frontier place.

It is gone, hidden, and stolen by minutes and years and greed. The old man was once young - in the east, when the frontier place was new and verdant and alive with wonders to be sought and found, but never owned. He is first and last and liminal, he lives between what he would be and what he is while young - a time that lasts forever. He has a name given him - a father chosen - an identity all his own. He was - is Nathaniel Poe, the son of men and women with no names or truth (for truth lies in the nature beyond the world his parents must have inhabited). They were dead before he was Nathaniel - or even Natty, before he was a child, before he was anything at all.

His father tells him of the family that must have been his before, a man, a woman, and daughters - people Natty never knew or will ever know or understand. He instead knows the stories of his father, his brother, his people. He can sense the land beneath his feet. He speaks two languages that of the man and that of his father, and he lives between the lines that his blood and his identity create.

His brother can speak the language of the man that was once Natty's father, but is not like him, he is a blood son of his father, quiet and noble in a way Natty is not. Often, he wants this quiet power. Instead, Natty is loud and open and a man that others of his blood respect. He does not care for or against it. He wants to live forever in the forest, where he knows the sounds and lights and smells.

This is his frontier place.

This is where he would stay forever. Instead, he finds a Yengese woman.

She is dark and beautiful, and has a sister unlike her. But somehow she is him and they are the same. She does not fear like her fair sister, instead she pockets a pistol and will fight alongside men. She is brave. She learns the wilds, and comes to love that frontier place that belongs to Natty. Perhaps she loves it because she loves him. He and that place are one.

The fair girl is timid and frightened, and his brother keeps her safe and that is enough for them both. They go from the earth together too soon and too young.

With the women comes a man, loud, brash, and commanding. He does not know the rules of the wilds - he is the west wind. He is England. Natty often thinks he ought to fear him. He never learns how.

As what is left of Nathaniel falls away from the world, an east wind whispers against the west in a soft whisper that will soon die: "Once we were here."

Then, the west wind blows on.

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A/N: Like it says at the top, this is just a Preface. There will be six more chapters, each a one shot view of the film from the POV of each 'main' characters of the film (Cora, Hawkeye/Nathaniel/Natty, Heyward, Uncas, Alice, and Chimgachgook). There will be references to the novel, and Nathaniel, will probably half the time, be called Natty because he has too many names and I can't decide which I like best.

So if you'd like too, I'd love to know what you thought of this part, even though I know it's short.


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